I Know What You Did Last Summer (1973)

This absolutely scared me to death when I read it in middle school. ( )

The book is totally different and so much better than that dreadful movie. ( )

On the same day she gets admitted to her dream college of Smith, Julie James receives a mysterious envelop in the mail. Opening it, she finds a simple note reading, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. In a panic, she gathers the other three teens who know what happened last summer. Ray, Barry, Helen, and Julie have a secret, it seems, and now it turns out someone else may know their secret as well.

At first, the foursome try to play the note off as a prank. But when Barry is shot outside his dorm room, it becomes clear that something much more sinister is at play. What is the dark secret that they all share? Who else knows their secret? And is this person out for revenge?

Perhaps this book was frightening in 1973, when it was originally written, but nowadays, it probably wouldn't scare kids who are used to the gore and creepiness of books like Cirque du Freak and The Hunger Games. Still, it did offer a little mystery and a series of clues that kids will enjoy following. Julie and Ray, the two teens who want to reveal their secret, are decent kids who are clearly caught up in a situation that is over their heads. Barry is the brash football king who makes them all swear to a pact to keep the secret, but it is Helen, the seemingly shallow beauty queen, who is the most intriguing character. Helen hasn't had life easy, and that makes her more driven and ruthless than she might have been otherwise. It would have been interesting to get the story more from Helen's point of view, rather than stereotypically virtuous cheerleader Julie.

I have a friend who loved Lois Duncan when she was a teenager, and she recently bought and reread all the books for nostalgia's sake. Apparently, they have been "updated" to include modern technology like the Internet and cell phones, and the effect was ghastly. Because the thrill comes from the characters' isolation, a lot of the updates were why so and so left their phone at home. Lame. Sorry for the bird walk, but I think today's teens can still appreciate this story as a hallmark of the time it was created in.

In any case, this book is a nice distraction during the...summer... Don't worry, if you read it then, I won't tell. There are a couple scenes of tense violence, but nothing too gory, unlike the cheesy movie I saw in high school. I would like to read more Duncan books, provided I can get my hands on the originals.

For grades 8 and up. ( )

ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults (2005.01 |
All Kinds of Creepy, 2005)

I am 38, and I read a LOT of Lois Duncan growing up. When the movie version of this came out, I had no idea it was based on this book. This is a suspense novel, not a horror one. There isn't much violence, and if you know where the story is going, it's pretty easy to spot the clues along the way. The teens run over a 10-year-old boy, not a hook man, and it's his Vietnam-veteran stepbrother who seeks revenge for his death. This is not my favorite Duncan book. I think she does best with her supernaturally-based novels. The first few chapters are hard to get through because she hits you over the head with clunky exposition, but once that's over, the pacing is great, until it comes to an abrupt, crashing halt at the end. ( )